Questions on the Gospels 1I,38,5, when he is again discussing the story of the rich man and
Book VI11 353 that rich man as enduring searing, punishing pains and that poor man as enjoying a cool, refreshing rest. But in what way we are to understand that flame of hell, that bosom ofAbraham, that tongue of the rich man, that finger of the poor man, that torture of thirst, that cool, refreshing drop, well it can hardly be ascertained even by those who look into it quietly and gently, never by those who go in for obstinate, quarrelsome arguments over it.
But certainly the following quick answer is called for, or else this deep ques tion which requires lengthy discussion will hold us up; if souls, even when stripped of their bodies, are contained in bodily places, then that thiefcould have been brought into the selfsame paradise where the first man's body had been. About this I hope to show at some more suitable place in the scriptures, if the need really arises, either what questions l ask, or even what conclusions l manage to reach.21
10. For the moment, however, l do not doubt, and I do not suppose anybody else does, that Wisdom is not a body, and therefore not a tree either. But you will only reckon that Wisdom cannot be thought of as being signified through a tree, that is, through a bodily creature as if by a kind of sacrament or sacred sign, if you fail to notice how many bodily sacraments of spiritual realities there are in the scriptures, or if you maintain that the first man did not need to live with any such sacrament, in spite of what the apostle says about what scripture said of the woman, who all agree was made for the man from his side: For this reason a man shall leavefather and mother and shall stick to his wife; and they shall be two in oneflesh (Gn 2:24); that this is a great sacrament in Christ and in the Church (Eph 5:32).
It is indeed astonishing, and scarcely to be borne, how people will have Para dise to be a figurative story, and will not have it to be a figurative fact. But if they do allow that as in the case ofHagar and Sarah, of Ishmael and Isaac, these things too were both facts that happened and yet were also figurative, I simply cannot see why they should not admit that the tree of life was both some kind of real tree and yet was also a figure of Wisdom.
1 1 . 1 would also add this: that while that tree did indeed provide bodily food, it was of such a sort that the man's body would be fortified by it with enduring health, not as with other food, but by some hidden infusion of vigorous well-being. That scone, after all, with which God warded off a man' s hunger for forty days,22 though made of ordinary flour, clearly had something a little extra about it. Or will we perhaps hesitate to believe that for the sake of some deeper signification God was providing the man through the fruit of a particular tree
21. He briefly mentions the matter again in volume Xn of this work, 34,66; and also in his Questions on the Gospels 1I,38,5, when he is again discussing the story of the rich man and Lazarus. 22. See 1 Kgs 19:4-8, Elijah's flight from Jezebel, and his journey to Horeb.